Tag Archives: airport drinking

My friend Jenny Adams, the most deadly of all Jenns, once posted a brilliant piece of logic on Facebook. She defined the odds of our particular tribe of travelling boozehounds running into each other and plying each other with drinks using the tools and extras that we seem to always carry. It was a set of odds approaching unity. It was kind of amazing. However, failing that kind of happy serendipity how about sliding up to an airport bar and getting a drink?

I spend a lot of time in airports, running to airplanes, getting patted down, and hanging out in airport bars. Airports aren’t exactly a haven of great cocktails – though there was a really wonderful bartender at JFK in T5 who went above and beyond and went scavenging for ingredients to make me a rum milk punch last year. However, over the last year or so and in talking to other booze travellers a list of go to drinks has emerged that you can get anywhere and any time that you can assure yourself are pretty much impossible to make badly. After all when your flight has been delayed again, or you find yourself stranded by the Oh God of Missed Connections you really need a drink.

Allow me to digress for a moment. Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld series once invented the Oh God of Hangovers. His reasoning for having it being an Oh God was that whenever you have a hangover you invariably say “oh god.” Thus a deity of whatever scale, whose purview is made up of things that are not exactly desirable to encounter will almost always elicit cries of “oh god” or similar sentiments. Therefore, if such a deity were to exist, would it not make sense to call them an oh god instead of a god? Anyhow, tangent over, back to the matter at hand.

What can you rely on to slake your thirst, while away the hours, and please the palate? What drinks will sooth your dire needs for anaesthesia and drive away the ennui of the halls of transportation? Most importantly, what can you get anywhere that will be tasty and satisfying, well at least not bad.

Bloody Mary, Red Snapper, Bloody Caesar, Bloody Maria

It’s pretty hard to screw up a Bloody Whatever, even ones made with a boring pre-mix can be easily doctored with that bottle of Tabasco and Worcestershire at the bar. Even without those options, it’s pretty hard to have a bad Bloody Whatever. Varying it up by adding gin to make it a Red Snapper, or tequila for a Bloody Maria help to keep it from getting monotonous and add options to the list. I won’t deny that a really great Bloody Mary is a wonderful experience. It is blessed to be like cold pizza for breakfast, you have to actively try to make a bad one in order to not be somewhat satisfying.

Gin and Tonic

No matter your views on colonialism, mercantilism, chartered companies, and empire, Great Britain left a few legacies that we can all savour to this day. In order to combat malaria, scurvy, keep crews of their ships complacent, and any other myriad maladies that might befall them in the Fever Islands as the West Indies were sometimes known, Africa, and the Indian Sub-Continent, various spirituous beverages became commonplace and made the taking of medicine easier. One of these was the gin and tonic. Three ingredients, that’s it. Absolutely impossible to screw up, refreshing, and crisp. The gin and tonic is a tribute to simplicity and its benefits. Even when you have nothing but gun tonic and slightly aged lime wedges, it still does the trick. Continue reading →